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April 04, 2006
Two Good Things
Dear friends and family,
We hope you are well and enjoying spring in America. We are in the middle of the "really" hot weather but are doing great. God's mercy came to us in the form of a freak cold front. Overnight the temperature plummeted to 76deg F!
To update you, we wanted to write about two good things.
__Good Thing Number One__
Thank God for a great success. We just completed a one-day Leadership Conference at the Unity Church. It was well-attended and supported by the church leadership. The elders of the church selected 10 people ranging from young men to teenage girls to nursing mothers. Chris did only half the teaching. Pastor Paul Malual was a teacher as was Elder Gabriel Bith. Another elder translated into English or Arabic. Some of the ladies prefer to speak their mother tongue, so occasionally he had to translate into Arabic from Nuer!
The material was based on the "Wheel of the Christian Life": Jesus in the center and the spokes of the wheel being Prayer, the Word, Witnessing, and Obedience. At the end we held hands in a big circle to show how we are all united in Christ. Chris wrote a booklet for the class and presented certificates in front of the whole church on Sunday. It was a huge success, thank you Jesus!
__Good Thing Number Two__
We had an emotional morning as the first of the returnees from Bonga refugee camp in Ethiopia rolled across the border, over the blood of a freshly killed bull, and into their homeland of Sudan. In the ensuing months, about 5,000 of 18,000 Uduks will be repatriated back into Sudan.
Twenty-one years ago the Sudanese civil war hit our area hard. The Uduk people, with whom SIM missionaries shared the gospel in 1937, were very hard hit. Many Uduks died, their churches and homes were burned, and they fled for their lives with only the clothes on their backs.
It is a little like the people of Israel who wandered in the wilderness for years because many Uduks have grown up knowing nothing but the desultory life of a refugee camp. For the last decade, they've had a relatively stable life in Bonga with some education and benefits, but still it's like living in a zoo on land that will never be your own.
So, you can imagine the sense of answered prayer today as big blue and yellow trucks flanked by flag-flying UN Toyotas crawled across the border. The border guards untied the string stretching across the road and the trucks came into sight of the party. Uduk kids peered over the side in amazement. Many had never seen Sudan before.
The SIC church was on hand, singing with all their hearts. They held aloft a banner proclaiming Psalm 121:7-8: "The LORD will keep you from all harm--he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore." The ladies danced and sang and cried Hallelujah with ululations. There were short speeches over a bullhorn by the dignitaries, the SPLA army commander, and Pastor Joshua from the SIC. Then the trucks rolled away slowly carrying the first group of 150 Uduks back to their home in Chali. The choir marched in front of them carrying a white sheet with a crimson cross on it and the Psalm 121 sign.
The situation they are entering will not be easy. The water situation is already a crisis. Schools are needed, and although the UN has planned as well as possible, it will still be difficult. Still, we have so many praises for their return.
His Hands and Feet,
Chris and Beverly Crowder
Published at April 4, 2006 01:40 PM
